illness

This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."

Glyn Hughes was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer in 2009. He had recently been granted use of an isolated stone hut - the "Bull-Box" - in the Ribble Valley and the time spent there and in its environs was a major part of his healing. This poem sequence describes the experience.

In her new collection, Katherine Gallagher draws on a rich inheritance from her different worlds: Australia, Britain - particularly London - and France. Her subject matter ranges widely: travel, exile, returning, change, nature, war, family, illness, love, loss, death and childhood experiences, always rooted in a passionate sense of discovery and attention to place. She juxtaposes a mix of colloquial and more formal verse-styles to evoke immediacy and feeling with impressive clarity and freshness of voice. Lyrical and politically-tuned, her poems range between moments of deep feeling and satire, laced with an often wry humour veering towards the surreal.

Julia Darling's second collection was completed a little over a year after Sudden Collapses in Public Places, and looks at the world beyond the hospital, although still from the view-point of a cancer patient in the advanced stages of the illness.

Anyone who has ever spent any time in a hospital or in a hospital waiting room will love these poems; anyone who has ever been to the doctor or felt ill or had to fill in a form will love these poems. That covers everyone. Here are poems about a difficult, scary subject, cancer, that circle around it lightly, on light dancing feet, and every so often whack you on the head. Oddly enough, Sudden Collapses is compulsively readable...

Isobel Thrilling's work is characterised by free verse, an extreme economy of language and piercing moments of insight. There are poems here which deal uncompromisingly with illness, loss and family relationships. Others set the human in a wider evolutionary context. Some are the expression of the sheer joy of living. Whatever the subject, the dedication and craftsmanship of a highly individual artist are always very much to the fore.

The candid and painful account of how a man rebuilds his life after it has been wrecked by alcohol. In coming to terms with his past, Conaboy found he was able to best express himself through poetry, and this collection is the result of this new-found talent.

David Jo Brown's life was short - he died before he was forty after a long illness. All the while he could write, he did, never making the reader aware of his own suffering, but - as a pacifist and a firm believer in the politics of Christianity - expressing his concern for life, and for other people, especially fellow sufferers.